[Illustration: J. A. FROUDE]
James Anthony Froude, English historian and essayist, was born April
23d, 1818, and died October 20th, 1894. His father was a clergyman,
and the son was sent to Westminster School and to Oriel College,
Oxford. In 1842 he became a fellow of Exeter, and two years later he
was ordained a deacon; an office which he did not formally lay down
until many years later, although his earliest publications, 'Shadows
of the Clouds' and 'Nemesis of Faith,' showed that he had come to
hold--and what perhaps is more to the point, dared to express,--views
hardly compatible with the character of a docile and unreasoning
neophyte.
These books were severely censured by the authorities, and cost
him--to the great benefit of the world--an appointment he had received
of teacher in Tasmania. He resigned his fellowship and took up the
profession of letters, writing much for Fraser and the Westminster,
and becoming for a short period the editor of the former. His _magnum
opus_ is his 'History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat
of the Spanish Armada,' in twelve volumes, from 1856 to 1870. His
other principal publications are--'The English in Ireland in the
Eighteenth Century' (1874); 'Caesar' (1879); 'Bunyan' (1880); 'Thomas
Carlyle (first forty years of his life)' (1882); 'Life in London'
(1884); 'Short Studies on Great Subjects' (1882, four series); 'The
Two Chiefs of Dunboy' (1889); 'The English in the West Indies' (1889);
'The Divorce of Catharine of Aragon' (1892); 'The Life and Letters of
Erasmus' (1892); 'English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century' (1892); and
'The Council of Trent.' 'Shadows of the Clouds,' 'The Nemesis of
Faith,' and 'The Two Chiefs of Dunboy' are in the form of fiction; and
though they--especially the last--contain some charming descriptive
passages, and evince some of Froude's power of character sketching,
they serve on the whole to prove that he was not a novelist. The
fortunes of his group of people are of less absorbing interest to him
than questions of social and racial ethics. There is nothing more
annoying than to have an essayist stand behind a story-teller and
interrupt him from time to time with acute philosophical comments on
ultimate causes. The characters of Morty and Sylvester Sullivan are
admirably contrasted Celtic types, but both they and the English
Colonel Goring are a trifle stagy and stiff in their joints. The
murders of the two chiefs, Morty Sullivan and Colonel Goring, are
dramatically told; but Froude's deficient sense of humor, at least of
that quality of humor which gives a subtle sense of congruity, results
in an attempt to combine the elements of the tale and the didactic
society in impossible proportions. He is an essayist and historian,
not a novel-writer.
Froude stands before the English-reading public prominent in three
characteristics: First, as a technical prose artist, in which regard
he is entitled to be classed with Ruskin, Newman, and Pater; less
enthusiastic and elaborately ornamental than the first, less musically
and delicately fallacious than the second, and less self-conscious and
phrase-caressing than the third, but carrying a solider burden of
thought than all three. Second, as a historian of the modern school,
which aims by reading the original records to produce an independent
view of historical periods. Third, as the most clear-sighted and
broad-minded of those whose position near the centre of the Oxford
movement and intimacy with the principal actors gave them an insight
into its inner nature.
There can be but one opinion of Froude as a master of English. In some
of his early work there are traces of the manner of Macaulay in the
succession of short assertive sentences, most of which an ordinary
writer would group as limiting clauses about the main assertion. This
method gives a false appearance of vigor and definiteness; it makes
easy reading by relieving the mind from the necessity of weighing the
modifying propositions: but it is entirely unadapted to nice
modulations of thought. Froude very soon avoided the vices of
Macaulayism, and attained a narrative style which must be regarded as
the best in an age which has paid more attention than any other to the
art of telling a story. In descriptive historical narrative he is
unrivaled, because he is profoundly impressed not only with the
dramatic qualities but with the real significance of a scene; unlike
Macaulay, to whom the superficial theatrical elements appeal. A
reading of Macaulay's description of the trial of Warren Hastings, and
Froude's narrative of the killing of Thomas Becket or of the execution
of Mary Queen of Scots, will bring out at once Froude's radical
superiority in both conception and execution.
This is not the place to debate the question of Froude's historical
accuracy, further than to remark that he was an industrious reader of
historical documents, and by nature a seeker after the truth. If a
profound conviction of the harmfulness of ecclesiasticism colored the
light with which he illuminated the records of the past, we must
remember that history is at best largely the impressions of
historians; and that if it be true that Froude does present one side,
it is the side on which the warnings to posterity are most distinctly
inscribed. A reading of the controversy between Froude and Freeman in
the calmer light of the present leads to the conclusion that the
_suppressio veri_ with which Froude was charged is not a _suggestio
falsi_, but an artistic selection of the characteristic. He felt a
certain contempt for the minute and meaningless fidelity to the
record, which is not writing history but editing documents. He
possessed, too, among his other literary powers, the rare one of being
able to individualize the man whose life he studies and of presenting
the character so as to be consistent and human. This power fills his
history and sketch with rare personalities. Thomas Becket, Henry III.,
Henry VIII., Queen Catharine, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth, are
more than historical portraits in the ordinary sense: they are
conceptions of individuals, vivified by the artistic sense. Whether or
not they are true to the originals as reflected in the contemporary
documents, they are at least human possibilities, and therefore truer
than the distorted automata that lie in state on the pages of some
historians. A human character is so exceedingly complex and so
delicately balanced with contradictory elements, that it is probable
that no two persons ever estimate it exactly alike. Besides, prominent
historical personages become in the popular imagination invested with
exaggerated attributes, and it is not likely that men will ever agree
even as to which of them was the hero and which the villain of the
drama. It was to be expected that Froude should be violently assailed
by those who accepted a traditional view of Henry VIII. and of Mary.
It was inevitable that he should differ from them, because he had more
than a view: he had a conception. His historical personages are
certainly possibilities, because they are human, and the traditional
figures are either monsters or saints; and humanity--at least Teutonic
humanity--does not produce unadulterated saints nor unrelieved
monsters.
While Froude's historical work has been criticized for lack of minute
accuracy in details, his books on Carlyle have been criticized for the
opposite fault of quoting too fully and literally; from letters and
journals, matter never intended for the public, and of a nature not
only to wound living persons but to create an erroneous impression of
the writer. The habit of expressing himself in pithy and pungent
personalities seems to have been with Carlyle a sort of intellectual
exercise, and should not necessarily be taken as an index of morose
ill-temper. A very delicate literary tact was necessary to his
literary executor, in selecting from the matter put in his hands that
which would combine to make a true picture of a crude and powerful
genius without making him appear to the ordinary reader a selfish,
willful man. Froude's idea of the duty of an editor of contemporary
biography seems to have been that it was limited to careful
publication of all the available material as _memoires pour servir_.
Such miscellaneous printing may in the end serve truth, but at the
time it arouses resentment. It resulted, however, in the production of
a book far preferable to the non-committal, evasive, destructively
laudatory biography of a public man, of which every year brings a new
specimen. It is at least honest, if not tactful.
Froude's early connection with the Oxford movement and his work on the
Lives of the Saints first called his attention to the study of
historical documents, and to the large amount of fiction with which
truth is diluted in them. His further researches among the authorities
recently made accessible, for the history of the destruction of the
monasteries, impressed on him the fact that an assumption of spiritual
authority is as dangerous to those who assume it as to those over whom
it is assumed, exactly as physical slavery is in the end as harmful to
the masters as it is to the slaves. He saw that ecclesiasticism had
been profoundly hostile to morals, and he judged the present by the
past till he really believed that the precious fruits of the
Reformation would be lost if the ritualists obtained control of the
Church. He persuaded himself that under such influence--
"Civilization would ebb, the great moral lights be extinguished,
Over the world would creep an unintelligent darkness
Under which men would be portioned anew 'twixt the priest and the
soldier."
It is perhaps too much to expect of a man of the imaginative
temperament of Froude, to whom the abominations of the Church from the
twelfth to the sixteenth century were as real as if he had witnessed
them, to retain judicial calmness under the vituperation with which he
was assailed; but his profound distrust of the mediaeval Church
certainly does give an air of partisanship to his strictures on its
modern ineffectual revival. He forgot that great principles of justice
and toleration are now so embodied in law and fixed in the hearts of
the English-speaking people that society is protected, and the evils
of spiritual tyranny are restricted to the few who are willing to
abase their intellects to it; that the corroding evil of conventual
life is minimized by healthy outside influences; and that the most
advanced modern ritualist would prove too good a Christian to light an
_auto da fe_. It was but natural that he should forget this, for he
was a strong man in the centre of the conflict, and independence was
the core of his being.
This strength of independence is shown by the fact that though young,
and profoundly sensitive to the attraction of a character like
Newman's, he was from the first able to resist the fascination which
that remarkable man exerted over all with whom he came in contact. The
pure spiritual nature possesses a mysterious power over young men, so
great that they often yield to its counterfeit. Newman was the true
priest, and Froude recognized his genius and that his soul was "an
adumbration of the Divine." But he felt instinctively the radical
unsoundness of Newman's thought, and "would not follow, though an
angel led." Others fell off for prudential reasons; but Froude was
indifferent to these, and obedient to a conviction the strength of
which must be estimated by the depth of his feeling for character.
Froude was sometimes criticized for writing history under the
influence of personal feeling. It is difficult to see how a readable
history can be written except by one who at least takes an interest in
the story; but whether capacity for feeling makes a man a less
trustworthy historian, depends upon how far this emotional
susceptibility is controlled by intellectual insight and just views of
the laws under which society develops. That Froude was an absolutely
perfect historian, no one would claim: he was too intensely human to
be perfect. It is safe to say that the perfect historian will not
exist until Shakespeare and Bacon reappear combined in one man. For
the great historian must be both scholar and artist. As scholar he
must possess, too, both the acquisitive and the organizing intellect.
He must both gather facts and interpret them. He must have the
artistic sense which selects from the vast mass of fact that which is
significant. This power of artistic selection is of course influenced
by his unconscious ideals, by his conception of the relative
importance of the forces which move mankind, and of the ultimate goal
of progress. His philosophy directs his art, and his art interprets in
the light of his philosophy.
It may be admitted that Froude possesses a larger share of the
artistic than of the philosophic qualities necessary to the great
historian. At times his hatred of ecclesiasticism becomes almost a
prejudice. In his writings on Irish and colonial questions he evinces
the Englishman's love of the right, but sometimes, unfortunately, the
Englishman's inability to do justice to other races in points which
distinguish them from his own. In some expressions he seems to
distrust democracy in much the same unreasoning way in which Mr.
Ruskin distrusts machinery. He had imbibed something of Mr. Carlyle's
belief in the "strong man"; though he, no more than Carlyle, can show
how the strong, just ruler can be produced or selected. But a more
serious deficiency in Froude's philosophy arises from his imperfect
conception of the method of evolution which governs all organizations,
civil and religious, so that they continually throw off short-lived
varieties and history becomes a continual giving way of the old order
to the new. To fear, as Froude seems to, lest a survival may become a
governing type, is as unreasonable as to fear that old men will live
forever. Certainly he would have taken a juster, saner view of the
English Reformation, had he been convinced that all the collisions
between the moral laws and the rebellious wills of men, which are the
burden of the years, are in the end obliterated in the slow onward
movement of the race; but then perhaps his history would have lost in
interest what it might have gained in philosophic breadth and balance.
For it cannot be denied that feeling has given his narrative that most
valuable quality--life.
The general recognition of Froude's power, and the growing conviction
that he was far nearer right than the theological school he so
cordially detested, was vindicated by his appointment as Professor of
History at Oxford to succeed Freeman, one of the severest critics of
his historical fairness. He lived to deliver but three courses of
lectures, one of which has been published in that delightful volume
'The Life and Letters of Erasmus.' The others, 'English Seamen of the
XVIth Century,' 'Lectures on the Council of Trent,' and the very able
paper on Job in 'Short Studies on Great Subjects,' even if taken by
themselves, would cause us to form a high opinion of the scope and
range of Froude's powers. Those to whom brilliancy is synonymous with
unsoundness may perhaps continue to call him merely a "brilliant
writer"; but the general verdict will be that his brilliancy is the
structural adornment of a well-fitted framework of thought.
[Signature: Charles F. Johnson]